


La Sangre y El Dolor

by Twilit



Series: The Gospel Bright and Tenebrous [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Eldritch Horror AU, F/F, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:31:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/Twilit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The body of Rose Lalonde sleeps, while her spirit festers in the Furthest Ring, slowly warping into a being of eldritch horror. Her mother, Roxy Lalonde, works herself into a madness atoning for her neglect, attempting to return her daughter to her.</p><p>But this is not their story. This is the story of young Kanaya Maryam, how she was thrust into a role of tremendous responsibility and terrible danger. Because although the return of Rose Lalonde will herald the descent of supernatural monsters to the earth, there were monsters here already.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. La Sangre

**Author's Note:**

> “...so we humbly beg of you, Bright Lady, a moment in the sun that we might remember, even if for just a moment, what it means to stand before the Eye of Heaven.”  
> -Tablet found at the Tell Asmar site, thought to be a record of slaves’ request to their mistress from the ruins of Eshnunna

I’m going to assume you know about the Lalonde; that psychopathic saviour, that nightmare at the end of human psyches. Anyone with a pretension to the occult knows about her and the events all those years ago. Hell, most people know her books; the popular fiction ones, that is. Not the tomes with script written in ink wrung from the dead eyes of things that were never born, with letters that scratch at your sanity. Yeah, from the look on your face, I’m going to assume you know all too much about RL.

But do you know about her consort? Less than a lover, more than a friend. A dark inamorata, held so close to her abyssal heart, but never touching for fear of the horror that would be born of passionate consummation. I would suggest the term soul mate, but for-

Well. 

I get ahead of myself.

Would you like to hear the story of the Dolorosa of our times?

\--

Your desire to go to prom, never really that pronounced to begin with, was squashed by the flight of a certain girl from her podium and subsequent reports of her... death? Collapse? Coma? You didn't know, but the fact remains that the major reason for you attending, lovesick idiot that you were, had been removed. There was no reason to go anymore, so you would simply not go. You would miss the chance to don the sea-foam coloured dress you’d sewn specially for the occasion, but that was irrelevant. Such was the final word of the over-dramatic logic of your withered, aching, teenaged lesbian heart.

Vriska Serket could not give two fucks about your logic.

\--

"And then she's screaming into the phone 'MARJORAM' or whatever 'YOU MADE ME THIS PENGUIN SUIT, YOU ARE FUCKING COMING TO PROM WITH ME.' Can you believe that brat was actually going to wear a denim suit to her senior prom? Ha!"

The short cackle was sharp enough to set that damn dog off, two floors below. Golden- green eyes lifted up from design documents and speared the perpetrator with a mock-angry glare. 

"Well thank small gods that your niece had someone to save her from that embarrassment," came the reply, wrapped in a voice like rustling satin sheets. But the mind could grow used to most things, so not one shiver touched the older Serket's spine. Porrim de La Dolorosa could have been disappointed, but that predilection for callousness was the reason Porrim kept the other woman around.

"Yeah, check it," Serket said as she sprawled next to her Dolorosa. Casting her stump around the other woman's tattooed neck, she showed Porrim pictures she had snapped of the girls. "Vris still wanted something in blue, so that's what she sewed up."

Porrim took up the phone. "A blue tuxedo? Hmm. Good, crisp lines. Nary any other departures from common forms. Dear, do you know if this Marjoram did the shirt as well?

A shrug. "Nah, but I figured you'd be interested, so there are more shots."

A smile. "Ah, but you do know me well."

A few swipes later, Porrim was prepared to declare that the girl was an extremely talented seamstress and go back to her own designs. Then she passed over the Vriska with a girl hanging off her arm and her heart gave a single, quivering beat. "Oh."

Serket gave a coy smile and rolled over to get up. "Yeah, the dress is pretty good too. Anyways, I'm going to take a shower, an- ufff!"

Porrim pulled the larger woman back down into the couch as she flitted over the other pictures. The grin on Serket's face grew with the size of the Dolorosa's eyes. Her nostrils flared in expectation when Porrim reached the end of the album. 

"Sorry, did you want something?" asked Serket innocently, belying her avaricious grin.

"Spinnerette, love, do you think you could contrive for me to meet this young seamstress?"

"Eh, I'll ask Vriska. I'm sure she'll be able to _somehow_ convince her wannabe-designer friend that the _freaking Dolorosa_ wants to talk to her."

"No, nothing that overt. Just make it so that we are in the same place at the same time." Porrim handed back the phone and slung herself under the woman's arm again. 

"Porrim, they live in Rainbow Falls. Do you even know where that is?" Spinnerette looked down at her and brushed some of the hair from her face, careful not to let any get caught on any piercings. A singular cobalt eye locked with the beautiful pair gazing up.

"So bring them here somehow."

"Mm. Might take some time."

"Mm. Then I might have to impose on you for a while longer."

"WHOO!" Yelled the larger woman, completely ruining the moment with a fistpump. Porrim buried her face in the robe in exasperation. And to hide the small smile.

"You are absolutely incorrigible," was her muffled reply. "You orchestrated this entire thing to keep me here longer?"

"Hell yes. You think I give a shit what Vriska and her not-girlfriend wear?"

"You are absolutely incorrigible _and_ a horrible aunt."

"All true. I'm a terrible actor, and the part of an aunt doesn't suit me at all!"

"And yet, your continued attachments to your family line are one of your only saving graces."

"That and my undying devotion to my mistress, yeah?" She batted over-long lashes at Porrim in false coquettishness.

"Your unbelievable clinginess, more like." The Dolorosa shoved her up. "Go, shower."

\--

As with most things regarding Vriska Serket you supposed, you had little idea of how you got caught up in the whirlwind. A call from your community's very own localized storm certainly started it scarcely a week after you left her passed out in a conspicuous convertible.

"Hey, fussball, my aunt's invited you and me to New York, wanna go?"

"Why on earth would your aunt be inviting me?"

"Eh, I figure she thinks we're scissoring. I'm not gonna be rude and disillusion her when that'd rob you of a chance to see the Big Apple."

"And certainly not when it gives you an excuse to publicly drape your drunken self all over me like a sofa."

"Mmm, nope. No idea what you're talking about."

"No? Does most of a bottle of Sourpuss not ring any bells? Whipping a finely tailored jacket around like a t-shirt at an afterparty? Getting so ill that I was forced to hold the nest of tangled vipers you laughingly refer to as hair back as you worship at the porcelain altar? Noth-"

"Ooh, hang on, that was a good one, lemme write that down." There was a scrabbling on the other end of the line and you facepalmed as you realized she was actually writing it down. "So, you in?"

For an angry second you wanted to spite her and say no. But then your imagination caught up, overriding the defensive snark, and glimmering visions of towers of steel and glass filled your mind. In your mind's eye you could see new fashions being born from someone walking out a storefront with the confident swagger or sway that you sought to emulate every time you wore your own clothing. You could see yourself, eyes alight with promise staring down Wall Street or Soho. And too, a creeping sense of _something_ prickled at your neck. It was like a promise whispered by airy sylphs, hinting at futures you could scarcely dream of. Ultimately, it was a sense of opportunities not to be missed. A pilgrimage to New York had so much potential for an aspiring designer.

"Your kindness is an unlooked for gift, and not one I would have expected from someone of your dubious virtue."

"Fuck you, I am a bottomless well of virtue. I have all the kindness. All of it."

"Yes, I rather suspect that's the problem."

"Huh?"

"I will have to ask my mother and father, but please inform your aunt that I would be delighted and am thankful for the opportunity."

When your parents said yes, you felt like it was just another sign that this was meant to be, that your life was now unfolding. The excitement of the trip was already wiping away the patina of regret and loss.

\--

Vriska's aunt met you at Grand Central and it was actually sort of cute how much Vriska hero-worshipped her. She managed not to gab endlessly about her on the train trip, but it was a near thing. Spinnerette ("Seriously, how awesome is that name?!") Serket owned several properties around the world, was an obviously war-scarred veteran and ran a law firm, of all things. That was a lot of material for Vriska to talk about, rendering her relative silence all the more miraculous. Getting off the train that evening, Spinnerette Serket was also unmissable, the crowds giving her broad stance a wide birth. With a start you realize the silvered glove you saw her wear while driving the two of you to prom was no such thing - it was a prosthetic. Now her sleeve was pinned up in what was apparently a custom-designed jacket with a dashing military cut. You had to find out who her tailor was.

With her other arm she waved. "Hey, shrimps."

After what passed for greetings amongst Serkets was done and you were slightly less intimidated by the tall woman, the three of you hurried through the crowds. There was something about the tall woman that parted people around her, like the bow of a ship cutting through an ocean of bodies. You snuck a look at her face to try and see it, but she caught you and cut you a wink. You were left blushing, clutching a mostly-empty suitcase. When your trio finally piled into the ostentatiously-tinted SUV, the older Serket cut Vriska off,

"Ah-ah. Into the back with you. Gotta pick someone up on the way home."

Vriska slid in beside you with nary a grumble and immediately started looking around and fiddling with the gadgetry in the "tricked-out" vehicle. Once underway, you fumbled for something to talk about.

"Who are we picking up, may I ask?"

"Goddamn Maryam, you're something formal."

"Sorry," you mumble.

"Nah, she'll like that. My, ah, what's the term these days? Partner? Sure. Anyways, yeah, picking up my partner."

"Oh." Her presumption about Vriska and you made a certain amount of sense. Then the Serkets began nattering to themselves and you were left to watch the towers flashing by through the screen of tinted glass. It was somehow exactly how you thought it would be and underwhelming all the same. You passed slowly through the canyon that was New York city, carved from thin air by human labour. The glimmering towers of your imagination are there, glinting dully in evening's light, dimmed as it was through the tint of the vehicle.

Eventually, the SUV pulled up to one of those towers and Spinnerette slammed it into park with some relish. A guard came out, presumably to tell her that she couldn't park there, but upon seeing the middle finger extended out a rolling-down window, presumably recognized the driver. He nodded wryly and went back inside. Moments later a woman in a dark, smart business suit stepped outside and approached the SUV. The door was barely open before she was talking.

" _Another_ one, Spinnerette? I swear to god, you spend more money on-"

"Hey! This one's from work, alright? I don't own anything to comfortably move three prissy ladies around in style."

"You mean _four_ , you obnoxious vainglory." 

"You calling me prissy?"

"No, I was calling you an obnoxious vainglory, but thank you for implicating yourself."

While the couple in front bickered, Vriska looked at you in confusion. Or rather she looked from your face to your hand and then back again. In confusion. Your hand had firmly clamped itself around hers and it occurred to you, distantly, you might be causing her some discomfort. And your face, well, you were quite certain it was draining of colour every moment you held your breath.

It was white. You'd gone white.

"Uh, you ok there fussball?" whispered Vriska, remarkably discretely. 

You managed an incoherent gurgle and tried to tear your eyes off the woman in the passenger seat. No dice. A gesture with one hand pulled the sleeve back to hint at a tattoo. A scarf unwrapped and casually discarded showed off more. 

"Jeeeeeeeez, Maryam, no making eyes at my aunt's girlfriend." 

_That is certainly not what I am doing Vriska, have you no class?_ Well, that was what you'd wanted to say, in any case. A weak hiss left your strangling trachea instead. Swallowing hard, you tried to make your hideously dry mouth form words.

"That. Is. The Dolorosa."

"Yeah Iunno who that is." Of course she didn't know who one of the most famous fashion designers in the world was; she thought flannel was something to be worn all year round and with anything. "But I guess she's preeeeeeeetty famous to you or something?"

You were thankful for the seemingly massive space between the rear seats and the front compartment in this massive beast because you began to babble under the arguing of the adults in front of you.

"Oh my god Vriska she is probably the most important female entrepreneur of the past decade never mind that she makes absolutely beautiful designs and she also led a lecture circuit on feminism in the twenty-first century that nearly got thrown out of Oxford for its radicalism and oh my god I cannot believe I am in the same car as the Dolorosa Vriska Be Completely Honest With Me Am I Dreaming."

Your wide-eyed gaze finally fixed on your friend in a panic as you bite out those last words with heightened precision. 

"Please, Kanaya, I detest titles. If you have to use my last name, it should be ‘de la Dolorosa’. But I would much rather you call me Porrim."

The Dolorosa, Porrim de la Dolorosa, knew your name. She knew your name and she was offering her hand to shake. Mutely, you shook it. Limply, though by her very touch she managed to make it a gesture of warmth. The books that comprise the piles of trash literature in your room would have had you faint at this point. Fortunately (or not, part of you remarks snidely) you didn't and babbled something that you were sure was nonsense on account of the snickering Vriska let out. In a set of movements so natural as to be automatic, you elbowed her and she shifted around the dagger-joint aimed at her side. For some reason this broadened the smile on the Dolorosa's face.

\--

In your more reminiscent moments, that smile warms you, reminds you of simpler times.

In your more bitter moments, you curse your youthful enthusiasm and that fucking hand-clasp.

\--

The pair of you were shown to the room that you would be sharing. It had only one bed, but a lovely, deep-cushioned sofa as well. Not really a surprise given that the suite you were in was larger than the first floor of your house. And here you thought that space was a premium in New York. Perhaps the older Serket really was as successful and "awesome" as Vriska claimed.

Night had long since fallen, not that you could have told from inside the SUV. After a quick poll, no one particularly felt like going on for food. So Spinnerette rubbed her hand over her laptop and laughed a low laugh while the Dolorosa (you could not bring yourself to think of her as anything else) shook her head and went about getting drinks. Vriska's aunt flopped into a seat with a tablet, demanding orders of food from the lot of you. You and Vriska exchanged a look and chose Chinese before being met by a scowl from Spinnerette.

"Nah girls, this ain't Rainbow fucking Falls, you get more of a selection here." She showed you the tablet and you immediately locked on to the Moroccan option. Your mouth watered at the prospect of tasting something like your grandmother's cooking. Vriska would eat anything, so you took charge of the ordering, with occasional looks to Spinnerette to make sure the total wasn't too high. She, of course, waved such concerns off.

You finalized the order and were handed a wineglass. Blinking at it blankly, you looked up at the woman who handed it to you, and the Dolorosa smiled.

"Don't worry, it's watered."

"I, ah, I," you were making a fool of yourself and tried to pull yourself together. "Thank you, but I do not drink, Dolorosa."

"What? At all? Good lord, how do you stand a Serket?" True enough, the pair didn't seem to have any problem and with sucking down their wine. Vriska made a face, presumably at the added water. 

"With great patience," you said and she flashed you a knowing smile that at once awed you and put you at ease.

"Is it for religious reasons, or...?"

"No, my family is not particularly religious any longer. It is simple that... well, I do not want ever to be in the sort of situations that Vri- where I don't have full control."

"Fair enough. I just thought you might have been Muslim, from your name."

"I suppose I am. But we've never really practiced, outside of visiting my grandmother. She's still... traditional."

"Maryam is a Turkish name, is it not?"

"Is it? I'm sorry, I haven't ever really looked into it... my grandmother is from Morocco. Which, I suppose, could have ties to Turkey." Afraid that you might be babbling on top of speaking stiltedly, you looked away bashfully. The Dolorosa smiled and took the wine glass from your hand, nodding her head into the massive kitchen. 

"Help yourself to what you'd like then."

You picked out a Perrier eventually, feeling like you should have something _special_ along with the rest of the group. You were invited to the Dolorosa's side, while Vriska and Spinnerette fought over the remote. The taller woman had no problem strong-arming her niece away, device clasped in her jaws. A blink and a soft laugh and you realized that they really must be blood.

"I don't know how she expects to USE that now, but I suppose it’s the principle that counts to her."

"Have you known Miss Serket long?" you asked, searching about for a conversational topic and desperately trying not to fangirl or ask personal questions. "I mean, if that's..."

"Oh, I should say I've known her almost all her professional life, except the first few years." A small, private smile. "Once she rose to what passes for stardom amongst her kind."

She gave you wry smile. "Liars, pirates, thieves... You know, lawyers."

You smiled back easily enough and quickly cast about for more to talk about. Before you could make a fool of yourself, she leaned back in the sofa and mentions, smiling over her glass, "Spinnerette tells me you're something of a seamstress."

Annnnnd you were done. You froze up, while your heart went on pounding, shoving more blood into the capillaries of your face than could possibly be healthy. The idea of being under the scrutiny, creatively, of such an eminent designer was enough to floor you.

"I saw the outfits you made for your prom," You actually managed to groan in embarrassment. "What? I thought they were quite good. A tuxedo takes some skill to put together, so you should feel proud that you even managed a standard cut. And prouder still that you made the blue work."

"God, anything was better than her going in a denim suit," you muttered under your breath.

"Would you have shrivelled up and died on the inside had she gone dans la mode Canadienne?"

It took you a moment to put together what she meant, but working it out left you a bit more confident, as if following the Dolorosa's thought pattern put you on a slightly higher level. "Maybe a little." 

"Would you still have gone?"

You hesitated. "Probably not. I had other things on my mind. It wasn't so much Vriska's threat that got me going, but rather her promise to wear what I'd made her. I wanted to see it realized, properly."

"Mmm." A sip of wine. "Good for you."

Naturally, you felt absurdly pleased at that, even if you couldn't tell if she was being serious. You resolved that since the chance of you being complimented by an idol was never going to happen again, you would take her words at face value. And if you were already going that far...

"And may I ask if you saw the dress I designed?"

"Oh, the sea-green thing?" she answered casually. "Yes."

Her casual, off-handed response nearly sank your boat. So much for taking compliments at face value. The reality was that you also had to take her indifference as such. 

"In comparison to the tuxedo, it was completely unorthodox. I'll grant that the two colours went together well enough, but where the suit had clean lines, the dress was a mess of... tidal patterns. The cut was casual where it should have been stiff. Rather than being accessibly daring, it was playing with ideas of virginal innocence, and I have no idea how you expect to sell that sort of thing. It managed to stick out like a Christmas tree in June."

Your heart shrank in on itself as you shakily brought the sparkling water to your lips. 

"In short it did not belong at a prom with dozens of nattering teenagers who only want to see more of themselves." Another sip, and a glance cut out of the side of her eyes. "It belongs on a runway."

You nearly choked on your drink, and stared at her wide-eyed. A teasing smile curled up from behind the glass.

"Well. With some work."

\--

The next day was largely a blur that followed a night of you and Vriska fighting about who got the couch, and then upon discovering that the couch was actually too soft and deep to sleep in, fighting about who got what side of the bed. Waking up with a face full of Serket armpit was not how you ever wanted to wake again. When you got to the open kitchen, Porrim, who had finally convinced you to use her given name, was already up and apparently basking in the sun. She made apologies for the "older, crabbier Serket" and gave you the keys to the suite and building. 

Once Vriska had stumbled out, more or less dressed, you dragged her downstairs to the Starbucks and then the aforementioned blur. Before you knew what you were doing, where you were going, you were dragging her into clothing stores, being dragged into comic book shops, and shoving one another out of the way in record stores. Your cash rapidly dwindled until you finally blew it all at a fabric store, emerging nervous-eyed and heaving for breath, sure that you were getting away with some kind of theft. Bouclé for $30 per yard? Winter was a ways off, but you were perfectly content investing in that purchase.

You made Vriska help carry the bags, because you knew she was going to do something stupid eventually and you considered this pre-emptive payback. Sure enough, on the elevator back up to her aunt's suite, she handed you a plastic card. 

"And what, may I ask, have you pressed surreptitiously into my palm?" you asked, already fairly certain of the answer.

"Fake I.D.! We'd be insane to skip the partying in New York!"

"Of _course_ it i-VRISKA SERKET WHERE DID YOU GET THIS PICTURE?"

On the plastic forgery your hair had basically been pasted down your head, like you'd just stepped out of the shower. You looked like you'd been dead for two days. The barest hint of a rounded white collar showed, and suddenly you knew.  
"Raided your family album! Shit's a gold-mine, Maryam. The fact that you look older then than you do now is hilarious."

You ground your teeth, shoved the bags at her to carry and stormed into the suite. It's not that you were angry at her for "raiding" the album, but rather bringing up memories of your clashes with the more traditional factions of your family. It was a rough time to start with, Rose having broken up with you quite offhandedly immediately prior. When those intolerant, religious... assholes had tried to foist their abominable moralizing onto you, you had quite dramatically flipped your shit. The aftermath had been caught in eternal pixellated joy.

Porrim and Spinnerette looked up at your entrance and had probably said something, but your storm's path took you straight to the bedroom. You had time enough to hear, "What did you do, Vriska?" followed by all-too-familiar protests.

Truth be told your ire had mostly vented itself already by the time you whipped a pillow at the wall and sat down on the couch in a huff, and you were edging into self-pity from the trip down memory lane. Fiddling with a bit of black lace, your thoughts were dragged back to Rose breaking up with you, Rose distancing herself from everyone and Rose... well, seemingly breaking down and fleeing the graduation ceremony. You knew you were being silly, intellectually. Her coma was not your fault and there was nothing you could do about it. But silly as it may have been, you raised yourself on cheap romance novels and your saccharine heart fairly radiated gloom.

Then the door cracked open, and a mess of hair poked in. 

“Yeah, ok, I’m sorry. I just scanned the thing, the pic is already back in your album back home.”

When your silence didn’t break and you remained hunched, fingers still gripping at your skirt, Vriska began to fidget. It would have been cruel to leave anyone else hanging.

“Anyways, the card’s been made, so you might as well keep it despite my shitty stealing. It’s the leas-”

You sighed, loudly. It was enough to cut Vriska off. “It’s not that Vriska. You couldn’t know. I am, of course, still angry with you which goes without saying, but you will simply have to make it up to me this evening. Now I expect I will be wincing at your horrific plans shortly, so let's have them."

With a broadening grin, Vriska began to describe what could have loosely been considered a plan. 

“So Porrim and Spin say to be back by two, but seriously, fuck that, the subway is open until…”

You wouldn’t wallow in self-pity and gloom, not here, not now.

\--

With a finger pressed to her lips, Vriska slowly twisted the handle of the door. Working it silently around, she lifted the door by it and a hand pressed near the hinges. Only then did she open the door, moving it as silently as a wraith. Weary beyond belief, her arm shook from the effort, but only just, and not enough to make a sound. Vriska Serket was a master at slipping home silently. Once inside she bade you leave your shoes at the door, but you were already unlacing them. With a nod she slid out of her sneakers and onto the balls of her toes. With a cocked ear, she shifted forwards, leading you into the suite. You followed suit, having learned a thing or two about moving silently from her.

Still, she stole through the apartment like a thief, completely noiseless. Your socks would hiss quietly against the floor from time to time and your skirts might rustle, but Vriska's movement was utterly silent and unobstructed. Until she froze and tipped her head again. A moment later you heard it too.

A sound like whimpering from the living room, high-pitched and needy. Whispered words that you couldn't catch and low, breathy gasps. Vriska turned to you, all at once scandalized and amused. In a low tone that you nearly missed,  
"Yeah, ok, I really don't want to watch or hear my fuckin' aunt get it on, so we are doing this fast. C'mon, Maryam, don't disappoint me now."

She took your hand securely in hers and darted forward, pulling you along. You kept up, but far less silently and as you passed the living room, you could not help but look in, terrified at being caught. You were in time to see the muscled form of Spinnerette arch backwards with a strangled gasp. But as you were about to clear the doorway, Porrim's tattooed arms snaked around the scarred body. The Dolorosa's head rose, licking a trail up Serket's front with an impossibly long tongue. Fangs flashed, and with desperate need and obvious relish, she bit into her lover's neck. Just as your view was obscured by the doorway, you swore golden-green eyes met your plate-wide ones.

Bare moments later, Vriska shut the door to your room and almost collapsed against it. Low breathy laughter escaped her, and in your state you soon gave up staring at her blankly and let out an adrenaline-fueled snicker. As the snicker exploded in your chest into disbelieving laughter you shoved a pillow into your face to muffle the giggling mess you'd turned into. It felt good, felt real, unlike what you must have imagined out there in exhausted delirium.

At some point Vriska crawled onto the bed next to you, completely sprawled across it.

"What an interesting sleeping position you've adopted," you remarked once you've removed the pillow from your face. "Most unorthodox."

"Yeah, and? Are you going to show me your pro 'sleeping' techniques?" This being Vriska Serket, the question was followed by a suggestive eyebrow waggle. In response you shoved her legs over with your foot, so she was slumped more on the floor than the bed. 

"Keep dreaming Serket. But gods, I could do with a shower now."

"Yeah, a cold one, I bet."

Sidestepping the implication, you shook your head, "But I don't think we want the obvious noise of that alerting the, ah-"

"Two-person lesbian fuck convention happening in the living room?"

"Thank you so much for that turn of phrase, Vriska. I will treasure its vividness, even as I bury it in the graveyard of my mind."  
"Yeah, I'm awesome."

"See previous statements about oneiric states."

"O-whatsis? Christ Maryam, how the fuck are we even friends?"

"Oh hells, I don't know. I keep you from doing truly stupid things and you drag me kicking and screaming out of my comfortable shell. "

"Maryam, I once spent my birthday drunk out of my mind and whipping my shirt above my head without a bra on, I don't thi-"

"You were also going to try and tightrope walk a clothesline, "fry up sum chikken," and grind on some girl on your roof."

"...ok, the grinding I actually remember."

"Yes, it happened in the living room."

"With-"

"With your bra on your head, yes."

"Heh. Good times."

The pair of you were silent a long while and you were half-convinced the girl had fallen asleep. Would have served her right, still tipsy and half slumped over like that. As you began to drift yourself, you called her a pain in the ass, affectionately, and in your head. Then,

"Hey Kan," came a mumbled, tumbling phrase.

"Yes?"

"I really do that? Drag you out 'n' stuff?"

"Vriska, if you hadn't mentioned this trip, hell, if you hadn't dragged me to prom, do you know what I would have been doing? Crying into my cereal, wearing black, eating Doritos and sketching dresses all summer long."

"...still wearing black."

You paused, unsure how to answer. In part because you legitimately weren't sure how to, in part because her comment stabbed at a true and sensitive part of your soul and also because Vriska was almost assuredly incoherent at that point. "Yes, but this is mourning, not self-pity."

"Nn."

Yeah, ok, you had no idea what that meant. As you slowly drifted back into sleep and considered changing, Vriska spoke up again in a drifting, fey voice.

'"Kan... thanks. Thanks for... makin' me feel... useful."

Sometimes, you forgot why you loved this terrible girl. You loved her like a snarling, strutting kitten that had just come in out of the rain. A posturing, daring thing, given to hostile stares, spitting and hissing, and eating all the food put out in an instant. But when you remembered, your heart broke for the mewling, wide-eyed kitten shivering cold and all alone through all fault of her own.

You kissed her then, softly, on the bare edge of her brow that you could reach. Her hair smelled of smoke and cheap shampoo, but your lips brushed warm flesh.

"Good night, damn fool."

\--

Your dreams that night were filled with writhing limbs, quick beating hearts and pillars of ivory that cast shadows in formless rooms. The pillars became spires that then bit down on your world and you exploded into a gush of hot blood and love. Then, darkness and a new formlessness. The part of your dreaming self that wasn't a witless animal intelligence understood what was happening. But even so, it was held back by invisible, unknowable shackles in your psyche, a lucid prisoner. The scene repeated itself, over and over, slightly different each time, until you were little more than a blood-soaked cloth flapping wetly in an astral wind of your own imagining. 

But if you paid attention, through the gloom, you could see golden-green eyes track, stalk your non-movement through the dreamscape.

And strangest of all, you woke refreshed, and unafraid.

\--

You were again the second one up and found Porrim once more in the kitchen, this time poring over papers and notes. You bade her a quiet good morning and she looked up at you sternly before returning the greeting. Guiltily you poured yourself juice and cereal and took it to the far corner away from the Dolorosa. The crunching was abominably loud in your head and you wished it would go soggy faster. A phrase you never thought would cross your mind. You felt like you had to say something about last night, but were at a loss as to what. Oh, sorry for sneaking in, don’t worry I didn’t hallucinate you doing anything weird with Spinnerette other than banging.

Perhaps leaving that last part out would be advisable.

“I would like to say that I am sorry for staying out so late last night.”

Porrim looked at you with an arched eyebrow, as if questioning the veracity of your statement. You were reminded of predatory eyes the colour of new wheat in that strangely unthreatening dream. But now you nearly tremble as she spears you through with regard, as if reading your mind.

“You are, aren’t you? No, I suspect it is Vriska who would be completely unapologetic.”

"She would also most likely offer some platitude along the lines that she can take care of herself."

A derisive, unladylike snort. "I'm sure she thinks she can. But this is New York City and there are things here no one should have to face."

You wanted to ask. You wanted to ask so badly, your throat burned with the question. You can almost feel the words roil in your mouth, shaping themselves, warming up your muscles and drying the spit from your palette. Almost, so very nearly, it erupts, _Such as vampires?_

But curiosity warred with trepidation and trepidation won, helped along by its ally, disbelief. Instead you ask, "Are those your designs?"

"Hmm? Ah, yes. Well, mine and some colleagues, employees. Come, take a look if you like."

And so you spent a good hour in something close to heaven. You were not yet eighteen and you found yourself in a field parallel to your dreams. The designs that the Dolorosa sorted through comprised everything from rough sketches to fully realized and modelled garments. Your eyes were drawn by coloured pencil sketches that exhibited the clean, sparse lines that you associated with her designs. In time, you noticed several were merely modifications of one another, though which came first was beyond you. And many had scribbled notes beside them, completely illegible to you. It took glancing at Porrim's notes to realize they weren't even in Roman script.

"Oh! You write in Arabic."

In an amused tone, Porrim said, "Well yes. I'm surprised it took you that long to notice."

"Well, I didn't think it was polite to read your writing... and I assumed the design notes were, ah..."

"Just messy?"

"No, ah, perhaps written in shorthand? Yes that sounds much less rude and is still entirely plausible. Let us pretend that is what I meant, please."

The Dolorosa's laugh bubbled free and clear. "Oh Kanaya, you worry too much. Truth be told much of it _is_ probably too messy. But I didn't learn to write Arabic until later in life."

"So you speak Arabic? I thought you were Spanish?"

"My family has roots all over the Muslim world. Spain was part of the Abbasid empire for a long time, after all."

"I hadn't thought of it like that. I suppose enclaves would have persisted even after reconquest."

"Something like that." A look of sad wistfulness crossed her face before clearing as she turned to face you. "And what about you? You must have something of a portfolio."

Suddenly your mouth was dry again. A harsh swallow and then, "Well, in the barest sense of the word, yes. It was my intention to spend a year further honing my skills and developing it before putting it on display." 

"That sounds like someone thinking of going to college. Eminently reasonable." Porrim set her pen down and leaned back, appraising you, as if waiting for something. "This is the part where you ask the established professional in your field of choice for criticism."

"What? Oh, god. Would you? I apologize, I have only my sketchbook and phone pictures on me and-"

"Of course I will. I can hardly make a judgement based on a single dress and tuxedo."

In your panicked, euphoric hurry to fetch your sketched it never even occurred to you to ask what the judgement would be on.

\--

The rest of the week passed with you basically studying under your greatest hero every morning. While Porrim forced you to put more and more designs on paper, in the interest of quickly, accurately developing your artistic skill, she asked probing questions of things that seemingly had no connection to fashion or design. While her eyes tracked the movement of a pencil or a needle, she would ask your opinion on things like politics, human rights, feminism and then cut over to flower arrangement and temperature preferences. You could keep up on most topics as you'd followed her speaking tours and read her books, but really you shone when she asked about greenery, much to her surprise. You admitted to being quite the greenthumb, cultivating a small garden of your own back home and pursuing attempts at topiary. The sense that you were being judged always hung near the edges of your consciousness.

Around noon each day, Porrim would draw the blinds and "kick the spider out of bed" which would be your cue that whatever strange training or testing she was putting you through was over. Sometimes you'd do the same for Vriska, and other times you'd go out by yourself. As far as you could tell, your friend did not care much either way. Only one day was your schedule interrupted when you found a note informing you that Porrim had gone with Spinerette to court, presumably to watch a trial. Vriska later informed you that "Yeah, my aunt got called in to cinch a trial that was going south. She doesn't do much work anymore, aside from stuff like this. I think she's bored by the lack of challenge."

Another evening, you got a text on your way back to the suite from Vriska.

heyyyyyyyy dont come back, they're fighting something fierce. wanna meet at the star8bucks?

You assented and found Vriska sprawled on a couch in the cafe. Graciously, she shifted her leg for you once you'd gotten a beverage.

"So all is not well in paradise?"

"Ha! Yeah no. Seems de la Dolorosa wants to go back to Europe and Spin's being all emotional about it. Tears and screaming, the whole nine yards."

That was the closest you'd ever heard Vriska come to criticism of her aunt, and you said as much. With a shrug she answered,

"Hey, if she wants to be in love with some flighty broad from overseas, that's her call."

"It is rather romantic though. Brash Spinnerette Serket weeping over her love's distance from her."

"Yeah, sure. Except de la Dolorosa is being all aloof and distant."

You sighed in a manner you would stringently deny being dreamily. "Imagine, though, the hurt she would have done your aunt by being more considerate. I don't think she would take it well, someone taking a more... piteous approach."

"Fuckin' right. Sometimes I think Spin's dependent on the woman."

"Over-dependent?"

"Nah, like legit dependent, it's weird. Like some psychological thing. Iunno. Hey, wanna do the Empire State tomorrow? We've barely done anything touristy, I feel like it's wrong if we don't."

\--

Oh the things that make sense in hindsight. The things that you disregarded at the time because your world changed in a sentence. 

"Kanaya, I would like you to come back with me to Valencia."


	2. y

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Of course we’re damned. We have to live forever with a hunger that drives us mad or die violently. The sun burns us so we grow pale and sickly and the only person who can alleviate one of these things refuses to spread her gift for fear that we would consume the world. And looking out there now, I daresay she’s right.”
> 
> -anonymous vampire, 1913, Western Europe

Calling it a hard sell was an understatement which you did not think you could conscience speaking aloud. Your parents had only just reconciled themselves to the fact that you were not immediately going off to college like every other good little girl of your age. Your well-considered arguments in the vein that your portfolio needed work meant less than the fact that two colleges had approved a deferred acceptance. So you had accepted the fact that convincing them that going off to Spain to jumpstart your career would be difficult. You were not prepared for the length of the argument or the lack of argumentative support from Porrim.

"Consider it an exercise in marketing."

Your parents were not ones for trusting anything less than a sure thing, and you knew you had to provide something tangible to convince them to let you go off with a strange woman they'd only heard of from your babbling. It was only accidentally that you stumbled upon the selling point.

"...at a loss to convince them how to support me going off on an unpaid internship to another continent."

"Unpaid? Good Lord, no. You'll be reimbursed for your labours. I'm thinking something to the tune of twenty-five thousand Euros?"

"...Dolorosa, I've got to go. I believe I will be returning your call shortly."

It turned out that your tangible was somewhere in the ballpark of thirty-five thousand dollars.

\--

Ah, dear reader, let me interject once more in my role as narrator. We could explore the wonderful things that happened in Valencia. But I think it would be best if you exercised your imagination and crafted them for yourself. I’ve given you enough seeds, go play in the garden of your mind for a bit. Run rampant through the streets with the characters, sun yourself on the beaches with them, dance in the night with them. And then, when you’re done with all that paradisaical fluff, come on back.

After all, I’m not in the business of happy endings. And this story has ‘tragedy’ written on the tin.

So, what do you need to know? There's a villa by the sea, all rough hewn stone as old as the Dolorosa. She is, of course, a vampire, and reveals this to Kanaya within months. There are three other girls learning with the Dolorosa, none of whom particularly like the newcomer, though Duena warms up to her eventually. There’s designing, drawing, sewing and economics. There’s even a small fashion show in Madrid. It features some non-Dolorosa designs slipped in by Porrim. The girls are all well and proud of the media’s attention to their works.

Vriska visits, towed along by her aunt. She knows of the two vampires now as well, and has been promised immortality as soon as she's proven her strength to Spinnerette. She is giddier, more hyperactive than ever, her energy finally having been directed at a goal, and one not far off her dreams: following in Spinnerette’s footsteps. A young body, already given to running, sneaking and scuffling in dark alleys is honed to an athletic prime. The mind is worked out more, shoved into books and put through philosophic gymnastics, even as the body is made to cartwheel on a balance beam. Vriska arrives in Valencia, a beaming, eager thing. 

But apologies! This story is of course about our other young American. When Kanaya asks Porrim about becoming a vampire, the (much) older woman responds with a smile and piles of books on vampire lineages. It’s far less physically demanding than Vriska’s regimen, but of course Kanaya knows nothing of that. There's a lot of reading, between bouts of designing, sewing and arguing. The secret histories are fantastical, every bit as romantic and exciting as her Harlequin dross. 

She is told there are questions to be discovered and answered, and one that she must ask, before the end. Where is the history of Porrim's line? Who brought her into the fold? Which bizarre and terrifying powers would she be able to wield? The books are full of information on the lineages abilities, passed down through centuries, millennia in some cases. They speak of mind control, turning into animal forms and cursed forms less… familiar. Blood magic, foresight, necromancy, orgiastic rituals, strength beyond that of humanity, it’s everything she thought vampirism would be. 

And worse. Slaves and breeding pens, blood diseases, whole lineages wiped out by vengeful humans by day, tales of starvation in the desert, of vampires so parched they could not muster the strength to hide from the sun. And haunting tales of slow madness brought on by the endless dark, the encroaching, soul-numbing night. The nitty-gritty, the dangers of life unnatural and damned. 

The long history of the dark kindred is spread before her, stretching all the way back to ancient Ur, far Xia. But they are silent on Porrim’s line, and she will not tell Kanaya herself. Research, insight and learning are the path, she says, sternly. This is more suited to Rose’s work than mine, Kanaya thinks, glumly. She is particularly sore because her research is eating into design time and the other girls are outstripping her. Oh, the blissful, mundane worries of a child, not yet plunged into the ocean of blood.

Answers come in margins, obliquely. All lineages express a fear of the Eye of Heaven, the Day Star, Sol, the Sun. But if you’ll recall, dear reader, Spinnerette and Porrim walked boldly out during the day. Descriptions of various individuals always refer to their flesh as "alabaster" and "marble" or less flatteringly "sallow" and "corpse-pale." Even those from Zanj became as “grey obsidian” and “volcanic ash.” Porrim is as dark and flushed as you'd expect from someone living on the Mediterranean coast.

Answers are found in oaths, fanciful stories and wistful dream-diaries. A single woman that few were privileged to meet. A vampire that could stand the harsh radiation of so close a star. The Bright One, Our Lady of the Rainbow, She Who Weeps For Us. In one tome, a prayer that one might walk under the gaze of God for even an hour. Found in a folder, scrawled, lunatic writing beseeches for salvation a figure the writer is sure only exists in his deranged imagination. A vampire in whose presence others could feel the sun once more, only lightly burning. 

It is odd for Kanaya to realize that someone she studied with for the past months is a figure of near worship. More strange still to realize that in texts that placed a great importance where one came from and who you brought into rebeing that the worshipped figure is only ever referred to in the singular, with no line or family. A solitary saviour, an itinerant vestal, ever on the road and ever alone.

The Dolorosa, the only one of her line, for centuries at a time.

So, questions discovered and answers too. But for all that, perhaps a little foolish, a little reckless for a wide-eyed child to decide ask an old woman, "Are you not lonely?"

\--

It finally clicks into place when she smiles with tear-brimming eyes that glimmer in the sun she turns from.

"Yes," she answers Kanaya, "that was the right question to ask." 

It would not be long before she would regret that one, foolish question. And nightmares of new wheat in the rain would not leave her for a very, very long time. How cruel to teach a child the history, but not the lay of the world 

 

 

 

We brought monsters to Earth, but they were already here.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god there are words for how embarrassed I am for this chapter but humanity has not yet discovered them yet because we have yet to meet the repentant shame-beings of Bashfulon IV in the Crestfallen Cluster.
> 
> Can we just pretend that it's a bridge to the next one, please?


	3. El Dolor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “After all, we must be sanguine about these things.”  
> \- British pun, common amongst the Chiropteran Coven, early 19th century

Your tongue scrapes across the mortar between stones worn smooth with a thousand years of traffic. It slithers through the gaps, lapping up quickly drying blood that barely wets your lips. Nails, once so frail and human, score lines in the rock as you crawl forwards, following your lengthening, questing tongue. Lapping, licking, in and out of your mouth, carrying with it what little sustenance it can. It rolls and roils this way and that, like a spastic snake seeking fresh nourishment. Your stomach, your _body_ , roars with primal hunger and it cares not for the grit and tiny pebbles that stick in your teeth and throat.

But! What’s this! Suddenly there’s a soft texture unlike stone, unlike mortar and not at all like the dust thickening your saliva. Your jaw nearly distends in your eagerness to clamp down on what your animal mind identifies echoingly as flesh. There’s a crunch as you bite through a wrist and _suck_ with inhuman force. There’s a sound like a milkshake being drawn through a straw and the skin of the arm crumples inwards in a rush.

It’s still not enough. The blood is cold, thickening, and you can feel it slime down your gullet and cloy in your cheeks. Still moving on instinct, you follow the arm for the neck, dart in like a snake and bite down. The blood is marginally warmer, more liquid here, but there is so little of it. It does not flow like you know it should. Another deep act of suction, powered by muscles you never knew you hard. Flesh tears and the head attached to the neck lols towards you. When what little of the blood you can get at here is ended, you move to eviscerate the corpse. But you catch a glimpse of the face and its familiar angles wrenches you out of your ravenous stupor.

Glassy eyed, Vriska Serket looks over your shoulder without seeing, lost to her newfound eternity. 

All around you are ravaged bodies, bite marks clear on their limbs and stakes clean through their hearts. Your scream cuts through the sounds of metal on metal and gunfire.

\--

You are curled up in a corner, clutching at your mouth and trying to vomit when you notice the shadow creeping towards you. You hunch up tighter when it whispers, “Kanaya?”

It’s Duena and you want to crawl into yourself. You can still taste the metallic tang of dead blood when your nostrils flare and you can _smell_ the blood rushing through her veins. Your eyes pick out in terrifying detail the pulsing of veins in her forehead, neck, her wrist as she reaches for you. 

“Oh god,” you whisper, hiding your mouth behind your sleeve. “Don’t come any closer. Duena, please. Don’t come any closer.”

She stops and looks at the bodies in the courtyard. “I thought you were dead.”

You don’t know what to tell her and so stay silent, trying to tear your eyes from her exposed flesh and holding your breath. 

"Kanaya, I thought you were dead! That man shot the Dolorosa with the bow, then you in the stomach and everyone else and I just ran and hid, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I keep hearing gunshots now, but when I heard the scream from the courtyard I thought someone might have arrived and didn't want them to get killed too so I gathered myself and came here and oh christu, what's happened to your face?"

Although she's seen now, you curl away and hold your arm tighter to your mouth.

"Kanaya, let me see, you might have hurt yours-"

"Get away Duena!" You fling her back, nostrils flaring, stomach growling and fangs bared. There's more strength in your limbs than you'd thought, because she skids back after stumbling.

"Oh lord, did you... did the Dolorosa manage to turn you?" Your eyes are wide and your chest heaving as you can hear the blood pound through her veins. But the question sticks, and you push down the animal hunger.

\--

Whatever genetic corruption transforms a human into a vampire requires a transfer of bodily fluids. Traditions differed the world over. Some fed from the intended for months so as to let the corruption carried in the anesthetic saliva slowly over-power the dwindling immune system. Some fed in tandem, the intended using knives or needles to pierce the flesh of the vampire. More carnal traditions relied on sexual methods in an orgy of transferrence. In counterpoint, those of a clinically modern mindset cycled the blood through intravenously.

The Dolorosa's tradition had been a ceremonious thing, a small gathering. The two Serkets, Porrim, and her students, who almost without exception glared at Kanaya. The Dolorosa and her intended wore loose, matching gowns of blue and gold. Billowing sleeves reached to the elbows and a golden girdle was clasped about their midsections.

"Our tradition is not an intimate one," Porrim had said, "but rather one of import."

She drew a slim, bronze knife from a scabbard at her waist and fixed her eyes on Kanaya. Eyes the colour of new wheat bored into the young woman and she shivered, afraid again and not for the last time. 

"It ensures that the line continues, but no more. Witnesses are present to confirm to our kind that Another Walks in Sunshine, so that they may trust in her and be glad. No less."

Gently, the Dolorosa took Kanaya's hand and turned it palm up. She placed the bronze knife at the young woman's wrist and Kanaya's eyes widened. 

"We do not...propagate, because too many of us in the sun would be the end of our world."

Kanaya barely felt the knife slip into her skin as Porrim started to cut, so sharp was the bronze. Only once the blade bit into flesh and start up her arm did she feel the deep, stabbing ache and cry out. Ruby red blood spilled out in a steady stream, following the parting of her skin like the wake of a ship, a river of red in rich brown soil. As she sobbed and tears fell down her face, Porrim let go her hand and took up the other.

"But we do continue, because to not would be an unthinkable cruelty to our kind. To never again feel the kiss of sunlight would drive us mad, and to true damnation."

As Kanaya wept, Porrim rotated the blade to its fresh edge and repeated the cut, from the wrist up. This time Kanaya managed to stifle her cry, but could not keep down the sobs that were leaving her in time with her life.

"So we continue. As one, or two. No more. And we go out into the world," she looked up at Kanaya, thanks shining in her eyes, "alone."

She let Kanaya's arm down gently now, leaning in to whisper. "Try to stay upright, with all your might. But it is okay if you fall."

As the younger woman bled out, weeping and gasping for the pain, Porrim moved quickly to a side table and carried it and a large bronze bowl back in front of Kanaya. She raised her hand, showing it to the Serkets and her students and brought the still-dripping knife to her own wrist.

Then there was a sound like thunder and the door blew in. Two men in what looked like long coats hurled themselves through and came up firing. The first projectile took Kanaya square in the gut, a fresh pain blossoming in a searing flower of heat and loss. She looked down in shock, her ravaged arms bringing her hands to clasp weakly at the thick, smoothly hewn stake that projected from her stomach. As the world went dark she saw, in the painfully slow manner of the dying, a second stake fly for her chest. And as she fell, the pain and blood loss finally too much, she saw the Dolorosa shift to take the projectile in her stead. She felt the spatter of hot blood across her face and gown, and like tiniest of shocks, on the cheeks of her open mouth.

Between the deepening darkness of her falling eyelids, she saw Porrim brace herself above her, the point of the stake sticking out of her chest. Blood dripped from its point between her breasts like water from a stalactite, slowly at first, and then at a steady trickle. Lithe fingers forced Kanaya's numbing lips open and the Dolorosa struggled to hold her wound above Kanaya's mouth, arms trembling.

Uncomprehending, Kanaya passed from this world.

\--

"Yes," you answer. "Yes, she did."

"Christos, these must be the worst conditions to be turned in. We must get you to the kitchen, you will probably go mad with hunger or something at this rate."

"Duena, I am barely holding back from ripping your throat out, you _can't_ stay with me."

"Then you agree we must get you some blood, yes? There are packs in a fridge." The other girl stood, straightening, holding a hand down to you, her voice more sure than yours and less afraid than she had any right to be. "Now, come on."

It is only minutes later when you are creeping through the halls that you realize you haven’t taken that breath yet.

\--

You're on your third pack of blood before your hunger lessens enough for you to realize something and grab at your stomach. You can feel your stomach through the hole in your gown and in a burst of sacrilege, you tear it open wider to get a look. There is the barest hint of a scar, smaller than the print of your palm, just above your belly button. The flesh looks puckered, but you can barely feel it as you run your fingers over it. Then you turn your palms to face you and check your forearms. There is no sign of the cuts the Dolorosa made. You give a start as Duena's hand touches on yours.

"Barely a scratch remains... you are so lucky," and for the first time you see something like real envy on her face. 

"I do not feel lucky right at this moment," you mutter and draw your arms close in to yourself. The Dolorosa dead, Vriska dead, others dead. You do not feel lucky at all. You feel very, very cold and suddenly long for the sun. Was this what Porrim meant? In any case, you ask, "Should we not flee? Who is fighting?"

"I am thinking it must be Donna Mindfang. The one you call Spinnerette. She was the only person I saw still standing when... when I ran away."

"Then that is what we should do now. Spinnerette is more than capable of taking care of herself."

"But I have already run once-"

"And that was the correct decision. I am thankful that you came back for me, Duena, but those men were armed and we are not."

It is your turn to offer your hand. She takes it and you grab a small bag of blood packs before leading the way to the front entrance. Your progress is slow, but silent. The slippers provided by the Dolorosa are ideally suited for stealth, much better than the heels you normally tramped about with Vriska in. You hurriedly push thoughts of your lost friend away and try to pick up the pace. Duena is not nearly as quiet as you'd like, but you're not met with anyone on your way into the front courtyard.

That is, of course, when a window on the second floor blows outward, taking chunks of the wall with it. A dark figure hits the ground with a crunch, bounces, and rolls to a crouching stop. Your eyes widen and you can pick out impossible details: an old scar across a craggy face, now matched by a freshly streaming parallel cut. Coldy glinting eyes barely register you before a familiar figure in the window above let's out a blood-curdling howl and viciously kicks a smaller form straight through the stone wall and into the courtyard.

Spinnerette Mindfang is a wreck, her clothing torn beyond repair, her body bleeding all over from a dozen slashes. You can see exposed teeth through a gash in her face and a terrible, bloodthirsty madness in her eye. Her eyepatch has been lost and in the empty eye socket you see nothing, but can feel a deep, pulsing malevolence. She takes a heavy breath and screams, 

"RUN! RUN, YOU FUCKING COWARD! IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU GO, I'LL RIP THE HEART FROM YOUR BODY AND DRINK IT DRY! TAKE YOUR WHELP WITH YOU, YOU CAST-OFF MISTAKE, RUUUNN!!"

A pulse of unidentifiable power hits you like a physical shock with that last word and you nearly bolt for the door. Duena does, and so does the huddled, broken mess next to the scarred man. At least, they try. You grab Duena and cover her with your body and the scarred man picks up the body like it was a handbag. Spinnerette Mindfang Serket hurls herself down from the second floor like a chiropteran missile, screaming for blood. The man drops something on the ground and in a single bound clears the compound wall.

Spinnerette seems to register the object a second before she hits the ground, because she's already diving away from it as a blast of sound and light fills the night. You flinch from the light, even as it warms you. The concussive blast of the sound crashes into you like the shrieking of an angry god, and you huddle up around Duena with a whimper.

It is a long time before you can move, and that time is filled with the shaking sobs of Duena below you. Still, your hearing slowly returns and you catch sounds coming from Spinnerette. They tug at you and as you get up, Duena staggers upright with you. She takes the first steps towards Spinnerette, a confused look on her tear-stained face. You follow closely. The words Spinnerette repeats whisperingly resolve into "help me" over and over.

A chill settles onto your shoulders like a mantle and you manage, "Duena, wait-"

And then Mindfang rears up with a shuddering gasp, her face a burned contortion of hunger and mindless wrath. Her jaw drops impossibly wide, tearing at the remaining flesh on her face, and with a grinding snap closes on Duena's throat. As the smaller girl twitches and moans burblingly into the night air, you stand frozen, shocked into immobility.

Then, as Duena's moans quieten and she begins to go limp, you snap panickedly back. There has been enough death this night and you will be _damned_ if you let this continue. Striding up to the hunched form of Mindfang, you haul back and as her eyes finally dart to you, punch her clumsily in the side of her head. There was considerably more force in the blow than you thought yourself capable of because with sickening thud! the older vampire is hurled back. Even as Duena collapses to the ground, Mindfang recovers and springs spider-like onto you, taking you crashing into the earth, fangs bared bloodily. You ram a bloodpack into her over-stretched jaws and the look on her face would be priceless were you not scared beyond belief.

The jaws snap shut with a spurt of cold blood and the vampire above you swallows inhumanly. Spitting out the tattered remains of the pack, she reaches into the bag disjointedly, arachnid-like and draws another clear before sucking it dry. Finally something like sanity creeps back into her eyes and she straightens, staring down at you with an alien mix of anger, disgust, loss and hunger. 

You venture a question, voice trembling, "Are you well n-"

"No, I'm not fucking _well_ , Maryam! Has the blood-loss gone to your fucking head?!"

"I was... sorry, I just..." tears begin to well up in your eyes as you hit your breaking point for what feels like the upteenth time of the night. You have been sacrificed, killed, brought back to life and thrust into a fight that makes no sense to you whatsoever and your only living friend is bleeding out next to you. "Oh god, Duena..."

"Oh for- you are doing no one any good like this. Sleep!" barks the woman on top of you. The command seeps into your very bones and you feel your eyelids grow heavy. You fight it for reasons you couldn't enunciate, and Spinnerette looks exasperated, annoyed.

"Sleep, Maryam," her voice commands, surprisingly not unkindly.

You do.

\--

"Old Scarface is of the Orphaner's line. They're all mean, self-absorbed and ridiculously vicious. Seems that there's a growing group among our kind that figure if they can't have the Dolorosa, then no one can. Least of all me."

It's the next evening and Spinnerette is explaining what happened last night. Or perhaps more accurately, ranting with barely concealed rage. You'd barely managed to ask what had happened to Duena and you before she'd started. Her powers of mind control, appropriately termed "the Mindfang," had seen Duena off to a hospital, silenced police inquiry and put the neighbours at blissfully ignorant ease.

"But why not just ask Porrim to... do whatever she does?"

"'The blessing' they call it," sneered the Serket complete with airquotes. "Good question. Porrim saw to everyone, eventually, even if those she didn't like were kept waiting."

A cold snort. "Waiting's good for them. I waited two hundred fucking years and only got five with-"

Spinnerette cuts herself short, her voice taking on a sorrow and pain that sounded completely out of place coming from that hard mouth, that hard woman. She looks to the side, out the window, into the dull black of night. You feel for her. As much as you are horrified at the loss of your mentor and your friend, Spinnerette seems to have lost something more. Her lean face gives little away. Her lips, never full, only press themselves into a thinner line.

"And now there's you. I don't doubt they think I've got you under whatever influence they think I had over Porrim, so the danger's not passed yet."

"They will be coming after me?" Your eyes widen at the thought of people coming to kill you for no reason-

"Of course. You're the new Dolorosa." -but that of your blood. 

You sit in silence as Spinnerette continues, but you barely listen. This was not how it was supposed to go. You wanted to become a vampire to help Porrim, keep her company, and for all the selfish reasons that you knew everyone entertained. There weren't supposed to be murderous bands of vampires coming after you, your friends weren't supposed to die and-

"Hey, Maryam, you listening?" Spinnerette looks at you like you're an idiot as you blink back blankly. 

"Oh, I-I am sorry. I just... I simply can't... concentrate," you feel stupid for your lack of focus, but surely even a Serket would be able to see the state you are in. Your fingers bunch in the folds of your dress and you think you might be on the verge of tears.

The woman opposite makes a face at you, but refrains from rolling her eyes, which you are certain Vriska would have done. "I was _saying_ that since Porrim... isn't here anymore and you're our best advantage going into this fight, I'll have to help you get a handle on your abilities."

"And... if I just want to go home?"

She sits back, arms crossed, and looking annoyed. "Sure. Perfectly natural flight response. You can go home. And then worry about trained killers getting up in your family's business, not knowing how to control your hunger, not knowing how to hide your strength and speed and eventually accidentally draining dry the girl you just tried going down on."

Spinnerette watches you hunch up, retreat into yourself and she sighs. A hand goes to her brow and she leans forward. "Look, kid. Kanaya. It's hard, I get that. And I'll own up, I'm not the best person to go through it with. But if we're gonna survive and avenge our dead, I need you thinking and coherent. Try to pull yourself together."

She gets up, shuffling through papers you'd barely noticed. "It'll take me the night to sort through her papers anyways. Take the night and don't worry about dawn. Grieve, do your thing. We'll start tomorrow night."

Before she leaves, you manage to ask, "You've seen this before, haven't you?"

A pause. Her back turned, she answers, "Yeah. Lot of blood on my boots."

"Why... why is it so hard to cry? Does it ever get easier?"

"Ah, hell." A pause. She closes the distance between you and pulls you up into a rough, clumsy hug. "Yeah, it gets easier. Maybe not the crying part. But it'll get better. With experience. With time."

She tightens her hold on you as you clutch back. "And I'm going to make sure we have all the time in the world."

The tears finally come.

\--

"Hey kid, you doin' alriAAAGGH!" Spinnerette barely cracks the door before slamming it shut again. You'd meant to warn her, but her insistence in ignoring basic privacy prevented such.

"Right!" She yelled through your door, in between curses. "First lesson, turning that damn light off!"

Between weeping and wandering the house aimlessly during the day, you'd noticed your surroundings brightening. You pulled the blinds, slightly paranoid of the sun, even as you knew the blood of the Dolorosa would keep you safe. It was in the relative dark that you noticed the luminescence emanating from your body. A warm glow seemed to shine from just below your skin. You held your bare arm up and watched as it cast shadows across the room with a wan light, like the sun through a dark cloud. Unkind and ungrateful things about sparklepires flitted through your mind even as you directed your rays with waves of your arm and movements of your fingers. You could almost feel it leaving you, like a memory of a summer noon.

Apparently it acts on vampires in a similar manner as well. Spinnerette walks you through the directions on how to control it. Through the door she walks you through what Porrim did, how your old mentor described it. She focuses your attention on trying to pull the air around you into you, through the pores of your flesh. It strikes you as a pointlessly impossible task, but you try your best. Eventually, your body physically trembling with the effort, the light dims, receding into you. If you think about it, you can still feel it, a mammothly slow pulse in your bones like the heartbeat of a tiny sun.

The older Serket, the only one you know now, makes your prime assignment learning how to control the output. "It's also how you let other vampires out into the sunlight with you. Once you're dark, keep trying to suck in the air, and our kind can walk in the sun if they're close enough. And I am going to be sticking to you like glue in the next couple of days."

While you eventually decide to think of it as inhaling radiation instead of "the air," Spinnerette's advice and training is very practical and precise, on the whole. And she isn’t joking about sticking to you like glue. During the day, she is often less than a meter away from you.

“It’s because you don’t have the range Porrim did yet. She had centuries, you’re brand new at this.”

“How can you tell what my...radius is?”

“Real simple. Watch.” She lifts a finger and slowly extends it, pointing away from you. “About here, it feels like I’m getting a sunburn.”

Her hand is about five feet away from you. Then she extends it more and it begins to smoulder. Further still, and it catches alight, filling the room with the wretched scent of burning flesh. As a joint of blood-smeared bone pokes through, she yanks back the black and cracked digit and sticks it in her mouth, reaching for a bloodpack. At the look of horror and queasiness on your face, she shrugs. 

“So yeah, sorry if I’m invading your personal space, but that’s the alternative.”

This is a madwoman, you decide.

\--

She is also embarrassingly straightforward. On the topic of drinking,

"Look, the easiest way of you getting any is while you're getting some. All that crap about vampires seducing young virgins, blah blah blah, it's based pretty well in reality. We are goddamn intoxicating animals when we want to be and if you ever had any problems picking up before, they are over.

"Anyways, drinking during sex is easiest because people's brains are clouded to begin with, then even more with our natural oo-la-laa. Plus a mild anaesthetic in our saliva and almost no one notices you take a sip, or a gulp. Just be careful not to take too much."

"How will I know when it is too much?"

"A few mouthfuls will last you for days, no problem, unless you've been injured. As you saw, blood'll speed that up, but it makes you hungry, taps into reserves. Like our strength, the rate it'll do so will improve over time."

"Do we... do we know how any of these capabilities function? I mean... it's one thing to read about in fiction and romance, but it flies in the face of medical science."

She shrugs. "There are a few vampire doctors these days and I've heard them trying to figure it out. But a lot of us are secretive as all hell, so there's not much, ah, research material. Also, a heads up, if you find someone you can drink from without sexy times, you're both going to get horny as hell. Shit's intimate, and both of you are still wired to respond to intimacy."

While it is harder to blush as a vampire, it is still entirely possible. That doesn’t stop you from worrying about consent issues, which Spinnerette blows off.

“Look, you ever get into a relationship with a mortal you trust, you might want to bring all that stuff up. But the best and safest way is doing it with strangers. You’re already swapping bodily fluids, what’s one more? Besides, a good drink will completely blank their mind, make them forget. You wanna do that to someone you love?”

“I think some people might take issue with blood being one of the bodily fluids.”

“Yeah, well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

“But if they’re not consenting-!”

A groan. “Look, kid. I am the literal worst person to go over this moralizing shit with. I told you my position! I think it’s fair and doesn’t hurt anyone! You got an issue with that, you are gonna have to figure that out on your own.”  
Which you have no idea how you’re going to manage. You’ve barely had sex, never mind had multiple partners.

\--

The other aspect that you have to learn is managing your human life. Which Spinnerette actually goes and makes more difficult.

"What?!"

"I went ahead and declared you heir to the de la Dolorosa business. There are some papers to sign in Madrid and you might want to think about booking a show or something."

Other than announcing that Porrim de la Dolorosa had passed away quietly in the night from a stroke, you hadn't heard of how Spinnerette was portraying her death to the outside world.

“What were you thinking? I can’t run a company! I can barely sew, how on earth can you expect me to run a fashion company?!”

“Look, Porrim wasn’t that great on the company side of things either, that’s why you have employees. Your dresses and crap are fine, Porrim said it herself. What’s important is that it makes you a public figure and gives us an excuse to parade around in public. Good test of your skills.”

“It makes me a target!”

“Not really. The Orphaner’s line won’t be able to attack us in public, and we get to rub their noses in their failure. When they do attack, they’ll be more likely to mess up.”

“Oh my god, Serket, you are incorrigible!”

Her face flashes in anger and pain for a moment and you are left confused. You retreat to the garden to blow off steam with the hedge trimmers. Eventually, though, you have to face your parents. You confront the inevitable phone call, head held listless in one hand while you field the numerous questions and demands. They are more or less happy for your luck and sympathetic at your loss, but worried about the stress. You could laugh. They only have the barest inkling of the stress afflicting you. Strands of your hair hang limply through your fingers, and your nails grip tightly, scratching at your skull. This is not the kind of weight a girl barely out of her teens should be carrying.

But their requests for you to come home does give you an idea, and you play it out in Madrid. You and Spinnerette are chauffeured there, as you are not even sure if you can exert your radiation absorption larger than the space of a car yet. 

You’ve managed to push it out to twenty, twenty-five feet at a time, but that was only for bare seconds and the sudden collapse of your absorptive field sent Spinnerette scrambling for your proximity. Her scowl wasn’t directed at you, but you felt guilty all the same, the smell and _taste_ of burned hair and singed skin filling your heightened senses. 

That guilt led you to thrust your wrist out to her, looking away. You felt her gaze on your face while a long tongue numbed your flesh and sharp teeth pierced your skin. The shudder and gasp you gave were obscene and only heightened your shame. You resolved to practice so as to never let it happen again. 

\--

The chauffered limo also lets her force the media crowds apart that have gathered at Porrim’s offices in Madrid.

The legal signings pass in a blur and you grind through the press release that Spinnerette has provided for you. You divert only at the end, stumbling through an ad-lib announcement of your own.

“For now, the Dolorosa brand will be moving to New York as I grapple with the complexities of the company and plan the next show, which you can also expect to be put on in New York. City, I mean. Ah, thank you.”

You can feel your Serket shadow at your back, pressing close and sharply hostile. The drive back to the villa is a heated argument that scores the leather and frightens the chauffeur with your volumes and the shaking of the car. Eventually you bring Spinnerette around to your line of thinking, citing your freedom to travel in the sun and the distances involved. While the assassins play catch up, you will have more time to prepare. It is also your company, in your name and you are determined not to let anyone puppet you, even Spinnerette. You are not sure who is more surprised by your determination.

“And this has nothing to do with wanting to see your parents again?”

“Of _course_ I want to see them again! I also want to talk to Vriska’s about-”

“No.” Spinnerette cuts you off, bitterness clouding her voice. “No, I’ll handle that, so long as you don’t go running off.”

“Do not worry, your bait will not go anywhere.”

\--

And so you find yourself back in New York, after a harrowing trip through terminals, trying to stay close enough to your new mentor. On the upside, you picked up a massive book entitled _Complacency of the Learned_ by one R. Lalonde. It kept you awake through the flight, letting you shield Spinnerette the whole way. It also kept a small, sad smile on your face the whole way.

Your reunion with your parents is a thing of gentle hugs and soft words. They remark at your darkened skin, how you’ve grown and how good the sun must have been for you. You want to laugh or cry so much at the words it hurts. It is the kind of irony you wished you could share. After Spinnerette lets you give your condolences to the Serkets, she spirits you off to the suite in NYC for more training and preparation, promising your parents they could visit whenever they liked and that you’d be visiting regularly.

A great deal of the training is learning your limits and learning to push them. In a week, you go from irritably waving your hand at spitballs thrown by the Serket while you read to swatting golf-balls whipped at your head with lethal intent. You spend your days sunbathing, reading and designing and your nights running, fighting and sewing. You hardly need sleep, a bare six or four hours.

“Porrim was just like that. The longer she spent in the sun, the less she’d need to sleep. And the warmer she’d be in bed. Here, give me your hand.”

You do, and you immediately catch on. Spinnerette’s skin is corpse cold compared to yours. “You’ll probably never be as strong as the rest of us. Hell, Porrim had three centuries on me and I could take her in a straight fight within ten years of my rebirth.”

Her face becomes wistful. “But you’ll be able to go where we can’t. And of all the lines, the Dolorosa is the one that stays the most human over the passing years.”

She pats your hand. “Hold on to that, hey? Now go practice flicking the light switch.”

You do, both practicing and taking comfort in the fact that you are less likely to turn into one of the hunched, hairless monsters you read about in Porrim’s texts and tomes.

\--

When the attack comes, it hits with all the suddenness that characterized the previous assault. This time, however, it comes up against nerves tightly-strung by days, weeks of waiting. Outside the window of the suite, there is a flicker of dark against the endlessly shining lights of the city. Spinnerette's head comes up even as the two men crash through the window, releasing the ropes they had rappelled down on. Before the UV grenade even clears the larger man's hand, your mentor is flipping the table she is sat at. Before pulling the tablecloth to cover her, she gives you a tight nod and a mental shove.

Then the grenade goes off with its terrific noise and light. Reflexively, you _inhale_ , focusing. You can feel your skin tingle as you absorb the radiation, fairly twinkling with lethal promise. The assassins uncover their faces and have a moment to display their confusion before you flare up. The grenade had filled the suite with such noise and light it was as if the most fantastic rave had been compressed into the space of a second. But for light, nothing could match you.

A new star is born in the room as you let go all control and your body is lit from within by untold millions of points of sunlight. You thrown your arms out wide as if welcoming death and dispense it instead. Light pours forth, rippling around, through your tanktop, from beneath the hem of your pants and from your hate-twisted face. They brought a pocket rave, but you _are_ a miniature sun. And while there's no noise to go along with it, your ears still ringing from the grenade, you can see their faces contort in howls of agony, even as they blister, ooze and burn. 

Your flare is short-lived, and even as you reign it in, Spinnerette discards the cloth and kicks away the table. Lunging at the larger man, she dodges one, two wildly fired stakes before backhanding him with such force you see his jaw come loose. But he's disciplined and fires twice more. As much pain as he must be in, it is virtually impossible to miss at the range the two find themselves at. Two stakes skewer the Serket, one in her side and one crunching through her sternum. Her eyes go wide and she staggers back while the Orphaner hauls himself into a firing position, aiming.

You come out of your frozen state, determined not to lose another friend. With a scream, you wrench out one of the stakes embedded in the wall and hurl it at him. It tumbles gracelessly, end over end, but with your unnatural strength it is lethal enough. The Orphaner sees its threat and has to dodge... right into a berserker Mindfang. A hand like a claw grabs his face and you watch in obscene fascination as her index and middle fingers crook back before stabbing into his eyes. With what little hearing you have regained, you can make out a high-pitched gurgle and Spinnerette's howling curse,

"Die screaming, you shit-stain of a failure!"

Then her hand convulses and with a ripping, cracking pull, she tears the front of the Orphaner's skull straight off. 

She is splattered with blood and brain-matter and stands a moment, a scarred statue of war-sculpted alabaster. For that moment, your heart is in your throat, your mouth dry with thirst and you can see what drew Porrim to this wild-eyed Amazon. Then there is a twang and another stake spears through her chest, jarring her and the illusion. The moment ends and she collapses. You whirl on the other assassin, eyes wild and fangs bared in unthinking rage. You rush him, even as he fires again. In that moment, the scarf hiding his face falls away and you feel a thrill of recognition. Pain blossoms in your shoulder and leg and you stumble. But your momentum is inhuman and still you crash into him, sending him hurtling over the side of the balcony while you stumble, trip and crash into the railing.

You can hear his scream and the abrupt end to it, then the night is utterly still, save for your gasping. With difficulty and great pain, you manage to remove the stakes embedded in your body. The wicked things splinter as you pull at them and you stifle screams as dozens of new points of searing pain erupt within you. Casting the things aside, you crawl to Spinnerette. To your shock, she still breathes, a shallow, hyperventilating process, one that sends blood bubbles popping out of her mouth. Desperately you cradle her head and try to think if you should feed her first or remove the stakes.

"Ka...na...ya," the vampire gurgles. You start, staring at her through tear-bleary eyes. "Did... you get... him?"

"He went over the balcony. He can't have survived... can he?"

"Hunt... him... down. Vengeance... for Porrim. For... the Dolorosa... my love... I am coming." 

"Quiet, Spinnerette, you must not talk like that." You bare your wrist and put it to her mouth. "Drink my blood, then we'll get these splinters out of you, yes?"

But the woman rolls her head away from your wrist.

"No. Other way... ‘round. End it for me... take my blood and... power for a while. Last lesson. Hunt... hunt him down."

The way she'd rolled her head away left her neck exposed, you realize, "Oh god, Spinnerette, please. Don't ask me to do this."

But she does not reply, her pulse fading from the panicked beating of a dying heart to the quiet, fading sigh of the soon-to-be-dead. You beg her again to listen, to turn back and drink, but she does not and her silence, her macabre resolve brooks no argument. 

And so you lower your lips to her neck, feeling your fangs extend wetly. Every sensation seems heightened and you can feel the parting of your gums, the grind of enamel on enamel. With infinite care, you bite, sliding the elongated incisors into the pale flesh, feeling the delicious puncture. With a reluctant tongue curling about, you lap at the disappointing dribble that leaks out. But even as the lifeblood fills your mouth with spicy warmth, you know you will not stop here. Your first real feeding is on a woman nearly a corpse, but even so, your every sense screams with life. 

Lapping becomes drinking becomes voracious suction as you swallow more and more of the cursed ichor of another vampire. When blood no longer wells forth from the neck and Spinnerette gives a last, orgiastic sigh, you rip open her shirt and run your lengthening tongue down her front, curling it around the stakes and sucking at the wounds. A distant part of you recoils from the heat lit in your depths by the ravishing of a corpse, but it does not stop you. Purpose fills your mind and an alien pulse wells up in your left eye. The purpose and the pulse have a voice, the last command Spinnerette Serket, once called Aranea, the Mindfang.

"Vengeance. Vengeance and blood," you whisper, even as the first police kick the door in and are frozen in place by borrowed power. 

Mechanically, you clean your face with a paper towel and slip into a longcoat. As the police jerkily do your bidding and remove the assassin's body, you go to the balcony and take up the trimmer, sliding it into the coat's pocket. Strapping into a pair of Dolorosa heels, you leave the apartment. With your blue-uniformed escort, you meet the crowd in the lobby, and with an aching throb of your eye, disperse them like the herd they are. The police take you to a bloodstain in the driveway of the condominium and your nostrils flare like a bloodhound’s. Your hunt begins.

\--

The youth shivers in the presence of so many elders and clutches at the meager bloodpack he has been allowed. Not even a slave for a failure like him. He has been excluded from the conversation, the others having made it quite clear that he was considered now nothing more than an incompetent lackey. At least Cronus had treated him with something approaching respect. Here, he was-

"-eakling, you are certain you managed to stake the Mindfang?"

Swallowing quickly he responds, "Yes sir. Cronus got her tw-wice, once in the gut and once in the chest and I got another into her chest. Too."

"Well, at least that bitch is out of the way. Deprived of any mentors or support, perhaps the new Dolorosa will prove to be amenable to our instruction."

"I thought we'd agreed to do away with the line entirely, to end our ridiculous dependency-"

"We were to do away with its selfish seclusion! Now that the Mindfang is out of the picture, we can turn her to public use! Spawn more of the sun-touched line and walk freely fina-"

What looked like a good diatribe in the making is cut short by a sound drawing nearer. Down the stairs creeps the sound of click-clacking, the casual, careful tread of a woman in heels. All eyes are drawn to the bottom of the stairs in a silence commanded by the unexpected arrival. In assured time with the steps, a woman, barely more than a girl, stalks down the steps. At the base, she pauses and takes in the room with eyes the colour of young jade. 

The silence is broken by the drawl of one of the assembled elders, "So kind of you to deliver yourself to our care, Dolorosa."

Kanaya Maryam sheds her coat, hanging it on the rack by the door. In that moment the young man knows he’s doomed. As he opens his mouth to shout a warning, Kanaya catches his eye in hers. He feels the command _**SILENCE**_ like a knell in his mind. He cannot speak.

"Might I ask what has brought you here, young lady?" asks the same speaker. At that Kanaya gives a small smile, a sinister pursing of dark lips on brown skin. She steps closer, into the center of the semi-circle of curious vampires. A sharp tongue licks at her lips and suddenly, as if a spell had lifted, the others seem to realize their danger.

"Vengeance and blood."

The world goes bright.

\--

You come to yourself in an abattoir, your nose filled with the scent of blood and burnt flesh. For a moment, you are torn between disgust and hunger, before you realize where you are and what the corpses were. And then you are remarkably at peace with the horror you have wreaked. And still, slightly hungry. Your tongue flits out and licks a spatter of blood from under your eye. The hedgetrimmer in your hands drips with entrails and blood and it is missing several teeth. Idly, you think you may want to upgrade in the future. 

Vengeance and blood, Spinnerette had asked. And you had delivered. Oh god, you delivered. A small, human remnant of your mind still quails and rebels at the slaughter you visited upon the crippled, burnt vampires, but it is quieted with the reminder of Vriska, of Porrim and her lover. It is quieted, but it is still there. You are thankful for that and imagine stowing it in a safe place, a warm place.

A dull thudding reaches your ears and you realize something has survived your rampage. You follow the sound to a hunched form, curled about the remains of a blood pack. Its eyes are wide with pain and terror, set in a face twice-blistered and burned. It fairly well creaks and crackles from splitting flesh as it grabs for your feet. You stay out of reach.

"Oh god, please, mercy, please, mercy. Don't... don't kill me. It's me, Kanaya! I'm Eridan, Eridan Ampora! From high school! You gamed with me and Rose and Sollux and Vriska-" It shuts up suddenly, as if aware of what a terrible choice of words that was. You regard the wreck of a body for a while, listening to its panicked breathing, at the sound of its heart speeding up. You can _smell_ the reek of fear on this creature, a pungent aroma that offends your human mind but excites the hunter beneath. You almost want to kick it up and make it run.

"That is strange," you muse coldly. "I do not recall an Eridan Ampora who ever did anything that required _mercy_."

\--

The sun rises on New York City, a vast sprawling metropolis that never sleeps. Around the clock, people work, even in the warehouses along the Hudson. It is a city that sees more freakish, impossible things before breakfast than most other places see their entire lives. It is a riot of noise and glamour, of gleaming skyscrapers and filthy, clamouring streets. Its inhabitants know better than to pay attention to every strange sound, every disconcerting sight. Particularly along the docks.

In the distance, a chainsaw sings.


	4. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “...To feel the sun without pain is to be made anew, whole  
> But take heed and remember, little fledgling mine  
> Beware her in white leathers who wears as a cloak Sol.”
> 
> -French fantasist song, c.1664

To Whom It May Concern

It Has Only Been With Great Difficulty That I Located This Mailing Address From My Predecessors Notes Which I Am Still Going Through. I Apologize For The Lack Of Contact With Your August Assembly But As I Am Sure You Know I Have Had A Trying Few Months. Please Accept My Apologies For My Tardiness As Well As My Greetings And Blessings As The New Dolorosa.

It Is My Duty To Inform The Plurality Of Your Assemblage That There Will Be Changes To How Members Of Our Kind May Walk In The Sunshine. Due To Perceived Failings In The Manner In Which My Predecessor Chose To Share Her Blessing With Our Species The Process Will Now Be Formalized And Modernized. Applications Can Be Made Verbally With My Assistant Or Online (Contact Information Included At The Bottom Of This Letterhead).

Said Applications Must Be Made Minimum One Month In Advance. Applicants Are Encouraged To Travel To My Location At The Time Of The Appointment. Those Incapable Of Doing So For Whatever Reason Must State This In The Application. I Will Contact You To Make Mutually Acceptable Arrangements. Further Questions May Be Directed To My Assistant And Will Be Answered With Due Haste.

I Thank You For Your Understanding In This Manner And Trust That The Clarity Of These Instructions And The Increased Availability Of The Blessing Will Lead To A New Era Of Peace And Amity Among Our People. Enclosed Are Tokens Of My Dedication To Said Era. Please Accept Them In The Spirit They Are Intended.

Sincerely  
Kanaya Maryam  
The Dolorosa

 

_Received by the so-called Dusk Council on June 21st, 2019 and read to its Assemblage in an emergency meeting on June 26th, 2019. Also presented to the Assemblage at this time: a bag containing eighteen fangs of various lengths and ages, tentatively identified as belonging to members of the Orphaner Conspiracy._

\--

And so ends our quiet aside on the Dolorosa of our time. I do hope you’ve enjoyed this little window into Kanaya’s life and descent into monstrosity. It was quite a nice distraction acting as your narrator for once.

What’s that? “For once?” Oh yes. Did you think that this was somehow my introduction? How do you expect me to introduce myself when I am already here? And have always been here?

Haa haa.

Hee hee.

Hoo. Hoo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RL will return.  
The Dolorosa will return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, I am so sorry for the delay in delivering these. 
> 
> My life never seems to go to plan, and my editor/beta-reader has been busy as well and I suck at editing my own stuff. So if anyone would like to help out with future chapters... just sayin'.
> 
> In any case, here ends the first side-story of -RL, and on a note that I hope causes you to, ah... read between the lines of previous instalments of this series.


End file.
